Understanding Cybersecurity: essential for Business Protection in 2026

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Cybersecurity is the practice of implementing people, policies, processes, and technologies to protect organizations, their critical systems, and sensitive information from digital attacks (Gartner, 2024).

 

Cybersecurity: the mission in cyberspace

The hostile actions to be fought in cybersecurity are cyber attacks: a deliberate and unauthorized attempt to compromise an IT system, network, or device in order to steal, damage, destroy, or alter information, cause service disruptions, or gain unauthorized access.
Cyber attacks are carried out by various types of well‑structured and organized criminal groups (each with a different objective):

  • Cyber crime
  • Hacktivism
  • Espionage / Sabotage
  • Information warfare

Across Europe, the vast majority of cyberattacks are attributed to financially motivated cybercrime groups, which is why many organisations are now turning to integrated Cyber Security Suite solutions to ensure continuous monitoring and response.

  • Confidentiality: protecting information from unauthorized access
  • Integrity: ensuring the accuracy and completeness of data, preventing unauthorized changes
  • Availability: ensuring access to data and IT services whenever needed.

 

Cybersecurity: three components

Cybersecurity is a fundamental pillar in protecting corporate data and reputation. Let’s look at its three main components:

  • People: The human factor is a crucial element in cybersecurity. User awareness, ongoing training, and identity management are key pillars for mitigating risks stemming from unintentional or malicious actions.
  • Processes: The set of organizational activities and procedures designed to ensure cybersecurity. Risk assessment, incident management, regulatory compliance, and business continuity are key elements of a solid security framework.
  • Technology: Cybersecurity is not a static destination, but a continuous process across an ever‑changing technological landscape. Threats evolve rapidly, requiring the implementation of increasingly sophisticated, proactive technological solutions.

 

Why cybersecurity is a priority

To explain the importance of cybersecurity, let’s take a step back. In Roman society, citizens considered their homes a safe place, protected from the outside world. Meanwhile, thefts, break‑ins, and intrusions increased. Initially, these were rare, sporadic events, not perceived as a real threat, but over time they became a daily occurrence. The problem grew so significant that it was regulated in the Law of the Twelve Tables of 450 BC, the first written laws of Roman law. This led to a radical social change: people began to protect their homes, at first in a superficial way, then progressively in a more structured manner, adapting defenses to new technological tools, up to today’s advanced alarm systems, surveillance cameras, reinforced doors, and high‑security locks.

We are in 2026, and we are witnessing the same, identical dynamic. This time in cyberspace and in a corporate and institutional context. Twenty years ago, cybersecurity was not seen as a major threat, did not require significant investments, and had no specific jurisdiction. Today, this is no longer the case. With hundreds of publicly reported cyberattacks occurring every month worldwide, the protection of corporate infrastructures has become an absolute priority for organizations across all sectors. A priority that can no longer be considered the sole responsibility of the IT department, but of the board of directors, and it deserves its own allocation in the annual budget.

At stake is the future of the company and a potential reputational, operational, and financial damage estimated at over €4.70 million per attack. We are therefore no longer dealing with a purely technical need, but also a legal one, mandated by law and regulated by specific European Directives. For this reason, in a context where digitalization is the engine of innovation, cybersecurity is no longer an option but a fundamental requirement to ensure business continuity, data protection, and customer trust.

Cybersecurity in Europe: Regulatory Framework

Across Europe, cybersecurity operates within a constantly evolving regulatory landscape that develops in step with technological innovation. The European framework is regularly updated and closely integrated with national legislation, creating a cohesive corpus of rules that apply across all Member States.

A major acceleration in this area came with the NIS2 Directive (Network and Information Systems Directive), which entered into force in October 2024. NIS2 introduces stringent cybersecurity obligations for a broad range of critical and essential sectors, including energy, transport, health, financial services, digital infrastructure, and many others.

Within the European Union, several key regulations shape the cybersecurity landscape:

  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): plays a fundamental role in the protection of personal data, imposing specific obligations on organisations to ensure appropriate technical and organisational security measures.

  • EU Cybersecurity Act: establishes a common European framework for cybersecurity certification and strengthens the mandate of ENISA (the EU Agency for Cybersecurity), setting shared rules to protect critical infrastructures and sensitive information and requiring organisations to adopt adequate security controls and report significant incidents.

  • DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): focuses on the digital operational resilience of financial entities, introducing rigorous requirements for ICT risk management, incident reporting, resilience testing, and third‑party risk in the banking and financial services sector and its critical ICT providers.

  • AI Act: although primarily focused on artificial intelligence, it contains provisions that are highly relevant to cybersecurity, as the use of AI systems can introduce new risks and vulnerabilities. The regulation sets risk‑based obligations for AI systems, including requirements around robustness, security, and governance, with full application scheduled from 2 August 2026 (EU AI Act, 2024).

Taken together, this complex web of European and national regulations defines a demanding but essential regulatory framework designed to protect critical infrastructure, personal data, and digital services that are vital to Europe’s society and economy.

 

Cyber attacks: a challenge for cybersecurity

From Generative AI to quantum computing, cyber criminal groups are constantly evolving, leveraging technological innovation to their advantage.

As a result, companies must face a wide variety of multifaceted threats. Protection systems that were effective a few years ago may no longer be sufficient. The ability to adapt quickly to these new threats is essential to maintaining security. Let’s look in detail at the most common and relevant types of cyber attacks:

 

Ransomware

This type of malware infects an organization’s systems, limiting access to data or encrypting systems until a ransom is paid to the attackers. In some cases, attackers threaten to disclose sensitive data if the ransom is not paid. Having 24/7 monitoring and response systems, anti‑malware solutions, and regularly updated software helps prevent these kinds of attacks.

Phishing and social engineering attacks

These attacks, now further enhanced by generative artificial intelligence tools, exploit psychological deception techniques to induce legitimate users, who hold valid access credentials, to perform actions that facilitate unauthorized access to systems, such as clicking on malicious links or providing confidential data. This tactic is extending beyond the digital world, with the recent spread of fraudulent paper QR codes. Such actions can lead to the exfiltration of this data, that is, the unlawful transfer of sensitive information to external entities.

 

Risks associated with services exposed on the Internet

These threats stem from the inability of companies, partners, and suppliers to implement adequate security measures to protect cloud services or other services exposed on the Internet from known threats. An example is web browsers, which may be vulnerable to cyber attacks if not properly protected; for this reason, it is important not to save passwords in the browser.

 

Account compromise through passwords

Staying on the topic of passwords, attackers often use specialized software or other hacking techniques to identify common or reused passwords, which can then be exploited to gain unauthorized access to systems, data, or restricted resources. For this reason, it is necessary to use complex passwords, at least 8 characters long, with a combination of special characters, uppercase, lowercase, and numbers. It is essential to use unique passwords for each account, change them every three months, and use multi‑factor authentication (MFA) for an additional security check.

 

Misuse of information

Authorized users may, intentionally or accidentally, disclose or misuse the information or data to which they have legitimate access, thereby compromising information security. For companies, it is essential to build a culture of security, implementing strict access policies and controls to mitigate the risk of incidents related to the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data.

 

Network and man‑in‑the‑middle attacks

In these scenarios, cyber criminals can intercept unprotected network traffic or manipulate the flow of data, exploiting the lack of encryption of messages both inside and outside the organization’s firewall. To prevent this type of attack, it is important to use encrypted connections such as HTTPS, avoid insecure Wi‑Fi networks, verify the authenticity of websites and apps, and use tools such as VPNs. It is also crucial to regularly update software and devices to reduce vulnerabilities.

 

Supply chain attacks

These attacks involve the compromise of partners, suppliers, or other third‑party resources or systems, creating a vector through which it is possible to attack or exfiltrate information from corporate systems. Today, it is essential to require suppliers to comply with security standards, implement strict controls, adopt measures such as periodic audits, detailed risk assessments, and include security clauses in contracts.

 

Denial‑of‑Service (DoS) attacks

Attackers overload corporate systems, causing a temporary interruption or slowdown of operations. Distributed Denial‑of‑Service (DDoS) attacks amplify this effect by using a network of compromised devices to flood target systems. Mitigating DDoS attacks requires a proactive, multilayered, and constantly evolving approach that takes into account new attacker tactics and the specific needs of each organization.

 

The dark side of the Deep and Dark Web

The Deep and Dark Web represent a thriving marketplace for illegal activities, including the sale of stolen data and hacking tools. These areas of the web are difficult to monitor and regulate and provide a safe haven for cyber criminals and malicious organizations. For companies, it is essential to have Cyber Threat Intelligence tools to identify potential threats, analyse attacker behaviour, and anticipate their moves.

Although widely discussed, these areas of the web are often confused with one another. Let’s look in detail at the main differences.

 

Deep Web

The deep web, also known as the invisible web or hidden web, is the part of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search engine programs. This contrasts with the surface web, which is accessible to anyone using the Internet. Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with coining the term in 2001 in the context of search and indexing.

Deep web sites are accessible via a direct URL or IP address but may require a password or other security information to access the actual content. Such sites are used for webmail, online banking, cloud storage, limited‑access social media pages and profiles, some forums and coded languages that require registration to view content. They also include paid services such as video‑on‑demand platforms and certain online magazines and newspapers.

 

Dark Web

The dark web is the portion of the World Wide Web that exists on darknets: networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without revealing identifying information, such as a user’s location.

The dark web is a small subset of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by search engines, although the term deep web is sometimes mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.

 

Dark Net

The darknets that make up the dark web include small peer‑to‑peer networks among friends, as well as large, popular networks such as Tor, Freenet, I2P, and Riffle, which are operated by public organizations and individuals. Dark web users refer to the normal web as the “Clearnet” because of its unencrypted nature.

The Tor dark web, also known as Onionland, uses the onion routing traffic anonymization technique, with the network’s top‑level domain suffix .onion.

 

Best practices to prevent cyber attacks

To prevent cyber attacks and safeguard their business, all companies must adopt proactive prevention and defense processes. Let’s look in detail at the main best practices for effectively managing cyber risk.

1. Cybersecurity and Incident Response strategy

First of all, developing an effective cybersecurity strategy is the foundation for protecting against cyber attacks. A key aspect of this strategy is the development of proactive security processes that identify potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Just as companies plan for emergency and evacuation procedures, it is necessary to have in place, in advance, a detailed Incident Response plan that includes procedures for rapid incident detection, containment, threat elimination, and restoration of normal operations. These plans must be regularly tested and updated to reflect new threats and technological evolutions. This entire process is coordinated by the Security Advisor Manager (SAM).

2. 24/7 monitoring and response

Adopting active monitoring and response systems, operating 24/7, ensures continuous and proactive protection of digital infrastructures. These systems combine advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with the expertise of an always‑on I‑SOC team to analyze data flows in real time, identifying anomalies that may indicate malicious activity. The ability to respond immediately makes it possible to quickly mitigate threats, reduce exposure time, and limit potential damage. The effectiveness of such systems is based on their ability to dynamically adapt to new types of attacks, thanks to constant updates based on threat intelligence.

3. Risk management with Cyber Threat Intelligence

No infrastructure can be considered secure without constantly monitoring emerging threats in the Deep and Dark Web. Cyber risk management leverages cyber threat intelligence to anticipate and mitigate threats. Collecting and analyzing threat data enables organizations to identify potential vulnerabilities and adopt preventive measures. Integrating cyber threat intelligence into strategic decision‑making processes allows the development of a proactive approach to security, improving incident response capabilities and optimizing the allocation of security resources. This systemic approach to risk management is crucial to effectively addressing an ever‑evolving threat landscape.

4. Remediation procedures and vulnerability updates

Companies must implement Detection systems that identify vulnerabilities and the security patches that address them. However, it is important to consider that relying solely on Detection services is not enough to defend against cyber attacks. The truly critical element in incident management is the Remediation phase: the concrete action taken to correct weaknesses identified during Detection. This process includes identifying exploited vulnerabilities, applying corrective patches, and reviewing security policies to prevent future breaches. A remediation approach supported by a certified “rescue chain” not only mitigates the immediate impact of an attack but also contributes to the continuous improvement of the organization’s security framework.

5. Building a cybersecurity culture

Building a security culture (Security Awareness) within an organization is a complex, long‑term process that requires constant commitment in terms of training and awareness. Security awareness must be integrated at all company levels, promoting a deep understanding of cyber threats and security best practices among employees. Regular training programs, attack simulations, and updates on the latest threat trends are fundamental tools for developing a security‑oriented mindset. Only through a deeply rooted cultural change is it possible to achieve a proactive and resilient defense against cyber threats.

 

Cyberoo and the proactive approach

CYBEROO emphasizes the importance of a proactive and holistic process that goes beyond simple technology implementation, promoting outsourcing as a key element for effective cybersecurity management. Through its MDR (Managed Detection & Response) service, it offers a 24/7 I‑SOC team dedicated to continuous monitoring, analysis, and response to threats, ensuring ongoing protection.

This process integrates advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence mechanisms with prompt intervention on any anomalies, eliminating blind spots in the defense of digital infrastructures. In this way, companies can focus on their core business activities, while the CYBEROO team takes care of their protection day and night, all year round, using cutting‑edge technology and specialized expertise.

 

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